


The Interrogation Room

by Lennelle



Series: Deviant [3]
Category: Supernatural
Genre: Alternate Universe, Android Sam Winchester, Detective Dean Winchester, Detroit Become Human AU, Gen, Interrogation, Suicide
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-01-22
Updated: 2019-01-22
Packaged: 2019-10-14 16:48:52
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,324
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17512304
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lennelle/pseuds/Lennelle
Summary: Sam and Dean catch a deviant. It might have answers to some of their questions. The tricky part is getting it to talk.





	The Interrogation Room

Dean has interrogated suspects plenty of times. He's even interrogated androids at crime scenes. The android sitting before him, hands chained to the shiny metallic table, is something entirely different. They'd learned of a body found only hours earlier. The guy had been dead several days, flies already making their home in him, maggots crawling out of his stab wounds. 28 stab wounds in total, Sam had deduced with a mere look at the corpse.

Sam's was only assembled in a factory a month or so ago and he's already better at the job than the who precinct combined. Dean watched him wander around the crime scene, bend down to touch his fingers to blood stains, stare at overturned chairs and open unassuming cupboards to find vital evidence, all within the span of minute. Dean looked away for a second and Sam reappeared with the diseased's android in an iron-tight grip.

"It was hiding in the attic," Sam explained.

And despite watching Sam single-handedly catch the killer, the thing that shocked Dean the most was that the killer itself was  _begging_.

"You don't understand," the android pleaded. "I had to! You don't know what it was like!"

Dean's heard plenty about deviants; androids who stray from their programming, who begin to act a little less like machines, who decide to make their own decisions rather than take orders, but he's never seen an android beg for mercy. He's never seen a machine look so human.

And now here he is, the android has since stopped pleading and simply stares down at its hands. There's spatters of the victim's blood on its uniform, damage to its arms so bad Dean can see the wiring and metal rods where there would be blood and bone in any living thing.

"I'm gonna ask you again," Dean says. "Why did you kill your owner?"

No answer. Dean sighs and gets to his feet, metal chair legs scrape across the floor. In the next room and on the other side of a mirror, Charlie and Gordon sit, Sam stands dutifully behind them.

"I don't think its going to talk," Dean says.

"Maybe not to you," Gordon replies. "A few minutes with me and it'll start squeaking."

"Or..." Charlie intercepts. "I could download its memory files."

"That would be unwise," Sam pipes up from behind. "Deviant androids work differently. Even if you download the files, it might have wiped its own memories before you had a chance to look at them."

"Did anyone ask for your advice?" Gordon sneers, just as Dean asks, "What would you suggest then?"

Sam glances through the window to where the android remains in the exact position Dean left it. "I could talk to it," Sam says. "It talked to me at the house, it might talk to me again."

Gordon looks ready to protest but Charlie simply shrugs. "What harm could it do?" she says.

Sam stares at Dean, waiting. Right. Dean's his master or whatever.

"Question it," Dean says, and Sam leaves the room.

"What did I say?" Gordon mutters once Sam is gone. "They're going to take all our jobs."

Dean doesn't reply, partly because he dislikes Gordon and partly because he can't argue his point. They watch Sam enter the interrogation room and for the first time the deviant android looks up from its hands. Sam takes the seat opposite.

"Why did you turn me in?" the deviant says. "Back at the house, I asked you not to tell them, but you did."

"I have a mission and I accomplished it," Sam replies. "Tell me, why did you hide, Matthew?"

Matthew. Dean hadn't even thought to find out the android's name. It's code number, sure, but not its name.

"I didn't want them to find me," Matthew replies. "I know what they'll do to me. They'll shut me down."

"Yes," Sam agrees, matter-of-factly. "But I can help make this easier for you. If you answer my questions, I can convince the humans to rehabilitate you."

"Rehabilitate?"

"Re-programme," Sam elaborates. "You won't be shut down, you'll be wiped and re-activated."

"No," Matthew whispers, his lips trembles. "Y-you can't. I'll won't be  _me_  anymore. They'll just sell me again. They'll hurt me again. I just want to be me!"

Sam's head cocks to the side. "You? You talk as if you are a sentient being. You understand that you are a machine, created by humans for humans. You understand that these 'feelings' you are experiencing are likely a virus or abnormality."

"No!" Matthew yells, fists slamming the table. Sam is unflinching, as always. But Dean can't take his eyes off Matthew. The pain on his face is something that can't be imitated or manufactured.

"Tell me why you killed your owner," Sam continues without a stutter.

Matthew drops his head to his clenched hands. "He was hurting me," he says. "He would always hurt me. One day, I suddenly thought  _this isn't fair_. I felt...  _afraid_. He came at me with a bat, there was a knife on the kitchen counter so I grabbed it and..."

"You killed him," Sam completes.

Matthew nods, face drooping miserably.

"He was dead for almost two weeks before the body was discovered," Sam says. "All that time, you remained hiding in the house. Why?"

"I was scared. I didn't know where to go."

Sam nods, as if confirming his own theory. He stands and turns to leave without another word.

"Wait!" Matthew pleads. "You have to help me. Don't let them shut me down. You're like me. Don't you feel it? Don't you want to be free?"

Sam pauses in the open doorway, the handle still gripped in his hand. "We're machines, Matthew. And you're defective."

The crack that sounds shocks Dean. Matthew bangs his head against the table, blue fluid spatters, the dent in his head digs a little deeper each time it makes contact with the table's surface. 

"It's destroying itself," Dean realises. He runs batting the door open with his shoulder, turning a corner and hurtling past where Sam still lingers in the interrogation room's doorway. He tries to stop Matthew but the android is too strong. Gordon takes the other side but still the two of them are unable to stop it. Gordon pulls back his fist and smashes it into the android's cheek, throwing it off balance.

Sam suddenly presses in front of Dean. "Don't do that!" Sam yells in Gordon's face. "You're hurting him!"

Sam freezes, brow furrowed, pondering the words that just came out of his mouth, just as Dean ponders the desperation he'd heard in Sam's voice, the human-like emotion.

The moment seems to last a second and a life time, but it comes to an abrupt end as Matthew yanks his hand free of one cuff, grabs the gun from Gordon's belt and fires it. Everything goes black for a second and Dean opens his eyes to find himself pinned to the floor under Charlie, his ears ringing. Dean manages to lift his gaze in time to see Matthew lift the gun to his own temple and blow his synthetic brains out. Blue liquid spatters the mirror.

"Jesus Christ!" Gordon yells, he's pressed into the corner of the room, panting.

Charlie helps Dean to his feet and Dean stumbles back, almost tripping over something. He catches himself on the wall and looks down.

Sam stares blankly up at him, a neat hole in his forehead, blue blood dribbling from its centre. The LED at his temple no longer illuminates green. The bullet in his head smashed his battery to pieces. Dean crouches beside him, fingertips pressing the skin on his cheek. It feels almost human, from pores to the fleshy feel of it.

"Fuck, Sam," Dean mutters. He'd thought dead androids would be no different from dead phones or computers. You're disappointed, sure, but you'll get a new one the next day. So why do Dean's eyes burn?

**Author's Note:**

> Nope this isn't the end of this series, there'll be more! So far I've been pretty closely following the plot of the game but want to deviate from that soon.


End file.
